Posted on 04/25/2003 2:26:41 PM PDT by green team 1999
'Bunker buster' missiles aim at Moon
By Dr David Whitehouse BBC News Online science editor 
Tests have been carried out on ground penetrating missiles using 'bunker buster' technology that could be fired into the depths of dark lunar craters to look for ice. The proposed mission is called Polar Night, a lunar orbiter that would fire instrumented missiles towards the surface of the Moon.
Tests performed recently in New Mexico have shown that scientific equipment could survive the rapid deceleration of striking the ground and being buried a few metres beneath the surface of the Moon.
The researchers hope that Nasa will approve their mission early next year for a 2007 launch.
Shock testing
The impetus behind these tests is that for many decades scientists have speculated about the possibility of ice at the lunar poles having accumulated there over geologically long periods of time.
The ice would be from impacting comets. If some of the ice from the comets found its way into dark lunar polar craters where the Sun never reaches, it could be trapped for billions of years.
The lunar polar ice hypothesis was finally confirmed by observations made by the Lunar Prospector spacecraft in 1998.
Technically, the Lunar Prospector data is compelling evidence for the presence of hydrogen. However, most scientists are convinced a small amount of water ice is present at the lunar poles, though other hypotheses exist.
Because of the scientific attraction of lunar polar exploration the University of Hawaii, with engineers and scientists from the US Naval Research Laboratory, Utah State University, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Los Alamos National Laboratory, and Sandia National Laboratory are proposing an adventurous mission called Polar Night.
"Polar Night would conduct a highly detailed remote sensing survey of the poles to refine our understanding of the temperatures and distribution of hydrogen, then directly sample the polar ice with three hard-landing probes," Professor Paul Lucey of the University of Hawaii told BBC News Online.
"The probes are based on bunker-buster penetrators, but instead of explosives, would carry sophisticated scientific instruments hardened against the shock of striking the lunar surface."
"The instruments were recently shock tested in the New Mexico desert by firing them at high speed into 2 metres (6 feet) of plywood, where they experienced 1200 G's of shock and worked perfectly afterwards."
New questions
According to Professor Lucey the existence of lunar polar ice raises a new set of questions.
What is the nature of the deposit? What is the source of the water? Are other ices besides water ice present? Is the hydrogen actually in the form of water ice, or is it hydrogen from the solar wind? He told BBC News Online, "The lunar poles are a potential science bonanza, possibly having recorded the volatile history of the solar system for 2 billion years." "That potential has an analogy with the poles of the Earth, where meteorites are routinely preserved by the Antarctic icecap and collected by scientists. There is a nice symmetry here: on the Earth, the ice of the poles collects rocks from space, while on the Moon, the rocks of the poles collect ices from space."
Easily collectable ice at the lunar poles could also transform the economics of space exploration.
"For resources for future space travel the chemical form and concentration are clearly relevant to the economic value of these deposits, regardless of our current ignorance of the economics of the future," says Professor Lucey.
The scientists hope the mission will be funded by Nasa's Discovery program of moderate cost planetary science missions.
Lunar Prospector was a mission in this series, and the current missions in flight are Genesis, returning a sample of the solar wind, and Stardust to return cometary and interstellar dust.
The proposals for the next round of the Discovery Missions Program are due later this year with the selection of the 3-5 finalists taking place a few months later.
If Polar Night survives the proposal process, the first impacts would occur in 2007.
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Bunker busters? Hey! I like that. Do they need more testing? Hmm? I have my ex-wife's address! They could use her house for target practice! I'm sure she would not mind! And she would not get hurt as long as she is surround by all my money she took! Oh ! Oh ! Ohhhhhhh!
That's okay. I hate
Japanese animation.
I'll stick with Chuck Jones.
Trust me, this is HUGH!
Yeah, we thought so too until I participated in a major engineering study of the problem. It is economically impossible. The problem is lifting the infrastructure and emplacing it at the lunar South pole. It probably would need a large nuclear reactor or lots of solar cells. The solar cells must either be placed on the rim of Shackleton crater and arranged to spin to follow the sun, or they must be placed >75 km from the south pole in order to be outside the Moon's "antarctic circle". Think of running 75 km of power cable over the lunar surface--no roads, hard vacuum, etc.
You need mining and earthmoving equpiment to dig up the regolith (dirt mixed with ice) and some way of separating them (we chose a big microwave heater and conveyor belts). These will be specialty machines capable of operating in vacuum and resisting abrasive lunar dust for long periods of time.
You need to bring spares, mechanics, tools, food, medicine, a complete infirmary, etc., etc.
You need several types of brand-new space vehicles: tankers, crew return vehicles, scientific excursion vehicles, etc.
Bottom line: if God were to do us a favor and emplace the necessary infrastructure for free, it might pay off. Otherwise, forget it.
--Boris
If so, then let's have more. More, more, more!
The amount of mass that would be mined and removed from the moon is close enough to zero in the mass equations that it can be ignored. If that is still a problem, we can crash an asteroid into the moon now and then to replace the mass. See? No problem.
Dateline Sea of Tranquility: Moon under attack! Planetary catastrophe predicted! Moonorities and wymoon hardest hit!
Setting up space infrastructure is the same. The initial cost will be huge. The government may have to foot much of the bill, however, infrastructure is one of the very few things the government is Constitutinally required by law to provide, anyway. Once that is in place, the cost-to-profit ratio moves dramatically in our favor. There are Earth-orbiting asteroids, such as Cruithne, that are largely iron, nickel, and other useful metals. All one has to do is send them home. Launch cost from an asteroid or the Moon is tiny compared to what it is here.
We have to keep the long view, something we conservatives are good at. An example of the other side is how Liberals whine all the time about money being spent on military R&D today. After all, they say, we already have the most powerful and advanced fighting forces in the world. They fail to realise that our power today derives largely from research done decades ago. Just as the technology investments of yesterday make us the force we are today, so will today's investments preserve us in the future. Let's not give up on the stars just yet! ;o)
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